The Utah Jazz are Going All the Way

Every year I write a blog predicting that the Utah Jazz will win the NBA championship and every year I am disappointed.  One might say “Isaac, every single year you predict that the Jazz are going all the way and every year you are wrong.  Why would you put yourself in a position to suffer even more public humiliation?” 

That is a good question.  And I must admit that oftentimes I feel like a naïve and overly trusting person in an abusive relationship.  If the Utah Jazz were my spouse we would have an annual conversation that goes something like this.

Utah Jazz: Isaac I know I’ve been bad to you in the past, but if you give me just one more chance I know things will be different.

Isaac:  But Jazz, you’ve told me the same thing year after year. You said you would put the family first!  You said you would take me and the kids to the championship.  I even believed you last year when you started off the season with a seven game winning streak. But in the end all you did was end up playing the lottery.  How can the kids and I ever trust you again?

Utah Jazz:  Well I’m different now, I’ve changed.  I spent a lot of time over the summer practicing and I got some new young guys that have a lot of promise.  If you’ll just give me one more chance you won’t be disappointed.

Isaac:  Promise?

Utah Jazz: Promise.

 (Utah Jazz and Isaac share a teary-eyed embrace)

But I honestly do believe the Utah Jazz have all the potential in the world but I think in order to succeed in Utah they need to learn a couple of things.

I went and watched the Jazz have their pre-season scrimmage.  Before they started playing they brought the team out on the court and asked each player a question or two.  Judging by the players responses I'm pretty sure none of them took speech class when they were in school.  It was nothing but a bunch of incoherent jive. 

"So Paul Milsap, what are you looking forward to in this season?"

"Ayknow jusa wanna gidutder n dowudado."

“Jeremy Evans, how many alley-oops do you plan on dunking this year?”

“Wessi, whenim upinda ai owlimdone is jus takincur abusiness.”

As each player answered another question the white, working class Utah crowd grew more and more frustrated. 

“Derrick Favors, what part of your game did you work on over the break.”

“Aughsujhghcdssgdagfbgjbaskteball.”

After several of these players had answered I overheard a very Utah looking man say to another “Well golly Hyrum, I cannot understand a word these brethren are saying!”

Perhaps when an NBA player gets drafted or traded to Utah they should put them through some sort of mini-course to teach them how to communicate with the locals.  They could learn phrases such as

“Thanks again for the cheesy potatoes Sister Steed.  They filled me right up!”

And

“I didn’t know I was speeding officer!  Honest to goodness!”

And in winter they’ll need to know

“Hey moron with the California license plate!  It’s freakin’ Utah!  It snows here!  If you can’t handle it then you should’ve stayed the heck in California!”

But anyway, I am just so grateful that the NBA is back and I am glad that the year the Jazz will win the championship is finally here.  What?  Why are looking at me like that?  You just watch they’re going to do it.  Things will be different you’ll see.  They promised.

Culturally Relevant blog about Twilight

In a last ditch effort for this blog to be somewhat culturally relevant I decided to hop on the bandwagon and write a post about Twilight. Now I have never read nor seen any of the Twilight books or movies but I thought to myself “Why not report on something I know nothing about?  Cable news does it every day!”  HEYO!

I never read any of the Harry Potter books either.  And I am glad I never did because every time I was leaving the theater after seeing a new Potter flick I would overhear nothing but a bunch of whiney know-it all’s complaining that the movie wasn’t as good as the book.  I don’t get these people.  If you are going to be disappointed by the movie because it doesn’t live up to the book then you probably shouldn’t read the book!  Movies tickets are expensive nowadays and you don’t want to cheapen the theatrical experience by frittering away your time reading.  At least that’s what my mother taught me.

It seems like the only reason they even write books is to advertise for the movie that’s going to come out about the book.  Take for example, say, The Bible.  I’d bet you anything that had The Bible not been written “The Passion of The Christ” and “The Ten Commandments” would have bombed worse than the 4^th Indiana Jones movie.  (Which coincidentally was not based off of a book.)

I wonder if this formula applies to other aspects of life.  If basing a movie off a book is the key to having a successful movie then maybe basing a job application off of a book would mean getting the job?  Perhaps you could submit your job application as a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. 

“It was a dark time for Pizza Hut.  Their delivery boy had recently fallen victim to college graduation and was forced by his new wife, against his will, to get ‘real job.’  Pizzas were stacking up around the store by the hundreds because there was nobody to deliver them to the hungry citizens of Gotham City.  What is a Pizza Hut Manager to do in such perilous times?

Hire Isaac Thomas as the new delivery boy (turn to page 53)

Hope and pray for some other form of miracle (turn to page 79)

(page 53)  Isaac Thomas courageously steps into his new position as delivery boy, relieving thousands of Gotham City’s hungriest occupants from suffering the slow and agonizingly painful death of starvation.  Innocent lives are spared and even more important Pizza Hut is saved.  The mayor awards the key to the city to the Pizza Hut Manager for his wise decision of hiring Isaac Thomas.  Pizza Hut is forever indebted to Isaac’s selfless service.

(page 79)  Due to no pizza’s being delivered, innocent lives are lost as the city’s pizza supply continues to go undelivered.  Pizza Hut’s convenient location on Harrison Blvd becomes so full of pizzas that its management and staff are suffocated and burned by the pile-up of cooked pizzas.  The remains of the Pizza Hut are discovered by archaeologists two thousand years later.  Historians liken the findings unto the findings of the destroyed ancient city of Pompeii.  The only remnant of people found is the outline of a store manager trying to protect a small child from being burned by the explosion of melted cheese.”

So yea, that’s my blog about Twilight.

Paradisiacal Lost

According to the online profiles of all of the girls I’ve stalked, girls like a guy who is smart. As a corollary to this ascertainment it became manifest that it was absolutely compulsory for I to demonstrate my high phrenic character to my mulieribus colleagues. But how?

When I first came to college I thought that simply being a student at an institution of higher learning would give off the impression that I was intelligent. But I began to think otherwise my first semester when my roommate Henry tried to cook Ramen noodles in a toaster.

Realizing that simply being in college wasn’t enough, I needed to find another way to pass myself off as an erudite scholar. In order to win the heart of a young lady I decided that I needed to go to the library and for the first time do something other than check my Facebook. I needed to check out a book. Determined to prove I was smart I decided I would only use traditional means to locate my book of choice. I looked up a book up in the catalog and tried using the Dewey Decimal System to find it. I searched for about an hour until I finally came to the conclusion that I had absolutely no idea how to use the Dewey Decimal System. I ended up just Googling “How to use the Dewey Decimal System.”

With the aid of a search engine I finally found the perfect book to impress the ladies. I checked out John Milton’s classic poem “Paradise Lost.” I can’t imagine any girl not wanting to cuddle up with me on a cold fall day and listen to me read some old English poetry in a fake British accent. Now I only needed to find the girl.

There is a certain spot on campus where I’ve noticed girls tend to hang out quite a bit. I figured this would be a perfect place to perch and act like I was reading while I awaited the approach of the girl who would want to discuss literature with a knowledgeable young gent like me. And as luck would have it it wasn’t long at all until a lovely young lady walked up to me and said “What are you doing in the girl’s locker room?” “Oh hello.” I responded. “I was just committing to memory some of my favorite passages from John Milton’s classic poem ‘Paradise Lost.’ I bet your pretty impressed that I’ve read it so many times that I’m now starting to memorize it.” “I’m going to get campus police.” She responded. It was when she said this that I started to get the feeling that she wasn’t going to want to cuddle. Her loss anyway. If she can’t appreciate a well-read guy like me then she doesn’t deserve to hear me read poetry in a British accent. And for her sake I really hope it’s true that it’s better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven. (See how I am applying what I read? I snuck that reference right in there!)

Well I guess if trying to pass myself off as a scholar won’t work perhaps I need to try some other means to pick up girls. Perhaps I could start cooking Campbell’s Soup in the dryer. It seemed to work for Henry.

Mitt Romney Tries to Eat Rick Perry

The Elegance of Collegiate Dinning

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  So by that definition I must be the most insane person in the world when it comes to dinner time. 

What will happen is around 9:30 (yes I eat dinner at 9:30 or later.  College: Where your lifetime of obesity begins) my body will notify me that it is hungry.  I will head to the pantry and notice that the only thing I have is a jar of peanut butter and an empty bag of “Apple Dapples.”  I will then open the fridge only to find several empty bottles of my roommate’s fruit juice.  After failing there I will go to the cupboards and see that I have several jars of Ragu tomato sauce and boxes of spaghetti sticks.  I will think “I guess I could make spaghetti.”  But then I will remember that I don’t have any pots to cook the spaghetti in.  Disappointed I will head back to my room.

But then about 15 minutes later my body will be like “Hello! You still didn’t eat anything!”  And I will be like “But body, there wasn’t any food, I checked!”  And body will be like “Yea, but that was 15 minutes ago, just imagine how much food could be there now!”  And me, thinking with the same rational mind-set of a second grade boy who is trying to get a girl to like him by throwing rocks at her, head back to the kitchen to see what I can find. 

After repeating this cycle for about an hour I eventually find myself dipping uncooked spaghetti sticks into Ragu sauce.

It’s no secret that college students skip a lot of meals and when they do eat it’s mainly crap.  But there has always been something that has bugged me.  Occasionally there will be a nice established adult who will be concerned about the health and nutrition of a college student they know.  They will decide that they want to help us out by buying us some food.  But what do they buy every single time? RAMEN! RAMEN FREAKIN’ NOODLES!  “Wow, why thank you Mrs. Jenkins for giving me the one type of food I can actually afford.  That was so nice of you.  And an entire box full of it too, wow.  What is that like three dollars’ worth of food?  How graciously generous of you to supply me with enough sodium to inflict me and my posterity with Type 2 Diabetes.”

I honestly don’t know what they’re thinking when they get that for us.  “Oh look here at the bottom of the shelf! It’s Ramen Noodles, Isaac loves Ramen Noodles!  He eats them all the time!”  I EAT THEM BECAUSE I HAVE TO NOT BECAUSE I WANT TO!

Luckily for me this year there are some girls who live down the hall who enjoy cooking.  I kept an eye on them for the first several days until I kind of got a feel for their schedule.  That way I can “happen to be walking by” about the time they are starting to eat.  “Wow!  I just happened to be passing by and I noticed that something smelled absolutely delicious in here!  What is that?  Tortellini no way!  And it looks almost as good as the girls who made it!” (Followed by a huge sincere smile)  Two minutes later I walk into my room eating a plateful of tortellini.  “Where in the world do you keep getting all of this food?”  My roommate asks.  In full maturity I respond “Your mom” and then ignore him.

But I think I am kind of starting to like one of the girls of whom I get dinner from.  I’m not exactly sure how to get her to like me back.  Maybe I’ll just throw some rocks at her.